The azalea is blooming!

Christmas Eve

Chris and I are lazily wrapping gifts, and enjoying the quiet, lovely darkness of the house--beautiful, beautiful Christmas Eve--have always LOVED this night.

If I had gotten it together to make a Chrismas card...

I think I would have used this image. Perhaps. Christopher snapped the photo last night through my office/drawing studio window. Those are little red berries in the lower right corner, not, as you might suspect, a reflection of red Christmas lights.

I like the fact that the photo seems to suggest story.

Farmer's Market Finds

Alexander and I arrived at the Farmer's Market late today--but not so late to prevent us from picking up the last two stalks of brussels sprouts from John of Weatherhand Farm. While Christopher has a fantastic recipe for brussels sprouts (one that actually makes me want to DEVOUR them), I must confess my first impulse toward buying these was aesthetic.

Studio Bits

In the last week I've been deeply involved with a 4'x5' collage, another one of my collider images--it's been on the wall all semester and has had various lives, but I'm finally nearing the end--these images are a couple details of note.

Studio View (miniscule, but telling)

Recipe for range of texture + subtlety of color punctuated with bits of intensity--that blue, that orange, Picasso's menagerie looking on: all in proximity.

Lisa Sigal

Check out this swift little interview with the artist Lisa Sigal.

Sometimes artists appear, or in this case, reappear at a moment when they are needed most in one's studio. Sigal talks about the act of framing being the first step in making a painting, painting being a kind of shelter or fort, and the idea of creating a kind of pictorial space of the architecture--all exactly what I need to hear right about now--as I muddle through the end of one painting and the beginnings of some others, and as I perpetually push against/hybridize the definition of a painting.

Some precepts for my paintings--

1. To not plan at all--not even one step ahead
2. to let the paintings lead--both visually AND materially
3. to not limit:
ways of laying on
paint
color
paint materiality
4. to search for as many methods of laying on paint as I can discover, AND once again, to let the painting lead in such endeavors
5. to embrace subjectivity wholeheartedly
6. to believe I will be able to follow the painting (acknowledging the difference between following and finishing/resolving)

A veritable city overtakes our living room--

Blue layers

1. some truncated, suggesting an expanse that is not visually apparent
2. truncating being a means of stopping evidence of action
3. opulent movement narrowed--fit into a strip of paper both set into another piece of paper and layered above/set above
4. periodic ruptures of color: pink, pale pale orange, a triangle of black, barbs of pthalocyanine rimming an edge, lemon yellow.

covering
uncovering
layering
reiterating the wall
paralleling the wall
building by adding and subtracting
building by accumulation,
ruptured accumulation

Toile

1. Toile in our bathroom
2. reminiscent of blue Toile wallpaper in the dining room of my childhood home/am I remembering incorrectly?
3. repository (therefore) of reverie, recollection, memory

52 actions (at home) is a list of mundane and often sense-heightening activities conducted at home. I began compiling the list several months ago, with no real direction as to what the list would accomplish save sating my curiosity. What would a day look like if reduced to a straightforward list of written actions?

On some level, I think of my paintings/collages/drawings as a list of actions--a list of actions analogous to actual movements of my limbs, my body. My relationship to the history of painting and drawing and, in general, two-dimensional image-making is complicated by the fact that I do not relish (first and foremost) the potentials in pictorial illusion. I relish the possibilities of the expanse--

1. as performative ground
2. as probable infinite

52 actions (at home)

Fumble in the dark.
Brew a pot of tea.
Sit on the couch in silence.
Pour a glass of water.
Make a bowl of oatmeal.
Read for several minutes.
Let the cats in.
Read for several minutes.
Fold a load of laundry.
Swallow a daily vitamin.
Respond to a crying child.
Change a morning diaper.
Wash a sink of dishes.
Spoon yogurt into a bowl.
Cut a banana.
Pack lunch for school.
Close a door.
Watch from a window.
Walk up a flight of stairs.
Put away clean clothes.
Take a shower.
Wring out a wet washcloth.
Dry a wet body.
Pull on soft clothes piled at the foot of a bed.
Smell the residue of brewed coffee.
Wear a pair of red worn sandals.
Sweep a rock strewn path.
Sweep a hairy floor.
Make an unkempt bed.
Correct a thesis paper.
Prepare for drawing class.
Pour a glass of water.
Drink a cup of tea.
Push a stroller down the street.
Buy a cranberry-orange scone.
Read part of an article.
Roast a pile of bright red beets.
Make a piece of buttered toast.
Wipe a crumb-strewn counter.
Close a half-open window.
Listen to the quiet of a house.
Put away the remains of dinner.
Load an empty dishwasher.
Paint toenails red.
Peel a newly bought orange.
Cover a blister with a band-aid.
Stand up straight.
Stretch a tight body.
Walk up two flights of steps.
Fill the tub with water.
Sit in stillness.
Give the cats some food.

Lydia Heuston Herman's Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

1. a way to make
2. another's version of something seemingly known
3. object/image/text
4. a paper with sentimental value
5. age contributing invaluable aesthetic appeal

List